In
the late 1920s Muruganar began to record the verbal
teachings that Bhagavan was giving out to visitors
and devotees. These upadesas were recorded
by Muruganar in the form of Tamil verses. When
a sufficient number had been collected, they were
arranged in thematic order. Bhagavan went through
this collection of his statements very carefully,
making innumerable changes and corrections. In
the early 1980s I found a proof copy of the first
edition in the Ramanasramam achives that Bhagavan
himself had extensively corrected and reworked.
In addition to making these corrections, Bhagavan
also composed new verses that he added at appropriate
places in the text.27
The entire work was published in Tamil under the
title Guru Vachaka Kovai, meaning 'A Collection
of the Guru's Sayings'.

Many
readers of books on Bhagavan will be familiar
with a translation of this work by Professor K.
Swaminathan. It was serialised in The Mountain
Path over many years and was eventually published
in its entirety in 1992. This translation tried
to bring out the poetry of the original verses
as well as the profound meaning. In making my
own selection for this chapter I have utilised
a different, upublished translation by Sadhu Om28
and Michael James, but I have subsequently modified
many of the verses to improve the clarity of the
English. Since all these verses began as verbal
replies by Bhagavan, I have attempted to cast
the sentences in such a way that they sound like
spoken teachings.

In
the Sadhu Om and Michael James version, the poetry
of the original verses is sacrificed for greater
accuracy in translation. I think this is a reasonable
position to take since most non-Tamilian devotees
will be more interested in what Bhagavan actually
said, rather than how Muruganar rendered his words
into Tamil poetry. There are three main divisions
of verses in Guru Vachaka Kovai: The Quest,
Continued Practice, and Experience of Reality.
The selection I have chosen comes from the second
section, Continued Practice.

66 The Individual I

775
He who does not have the knowledge 'I am, I am',
and who behaves as if he is a fleshy body, 'I
am so and so', will vainly suffer when the body
dies because he will be caught in the net of the
dream-like delusion that he too is dying.

776
The flawless Supreme Reality, true knowledge,
shines as the primal one and perfect whole. To
rise as an individual separate from the Lord,
who cannot be defined as 'He is this', even in
order to worship him, is wrong.

777
Reality is the unbroken space of jnana.
To rise forcibly as a jumping and suffering false
'I', different from that reality, is to commit
the sin of slaying the highest dharma and
cutting it into two pieces.

778
In the reality that shines as one, devoid of knowledge
and movement, how is it possible for foreign rule
to arise except by making an empty imagination
of a mental world that is different from God?

779
The nature of bondage is merely the rising, ruinous
thought 'I am different from the reality'. Since
one surely cannot remain separate from the reality,
reject that thought whenever it rises.

780
'Do nothing for which you will repent. If you
do it is better not to do such a thing again.'
If you leave the state of being in the Self, do
not think any thought. If you do it is better
not to do such a thing again.42

781
Don't become disheartened by thinking, 'When shall
I obtain the bliss of yoga, the state of the Self?'
because the true state of Self-knowledge is always
the same, shining timelessly without spatial coordinates
such as near and far.

27.There are twenty-eight of Bhagavan's verses
interpolated in various places in the text. They
are identified by having a 'B' prefix. Muruganar's
own verses only have numbers. (Click
to return to text.)

28.Muruganar nominated Sadhu Om to be his literary
executor, saying that he was the only person who
fully understood his works. Sadhu Om brought out
a Tamil edition of Guru Vachaka Kovai in
1971 in which he gave simple Tamil prose renderings
of all the verses. When I spoke to Professor Swaminathan
about this edition in the 1980s, he said that
the true meaning of many of the verses only became
clear to him after he had read this prose rendering.
(Click to return to
text.)

42.The quote is verse 655 of the Tirukkural
by Tiruvalluvar, an ancient Tamil collection of
spiritual and moral maxims. (Click
to return to text.)

Copyright
2000 David Godman. Reprinted by permission.

David
Godman is the author of several books about Sri
Ramana Maharshi and his disciples. He was the librarian
at Sri Ramanasramam for eight years. For more information,
see our reference
page about him.

This
article is reprinted with permission from
the book Power Of The Presence Part Two.
To learn where you can order a copy, click
here.

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